Little Girl Blue Part 14

Julia shook her head. "This is the first time I've been in a chat room of any kind."

"Okay, you can invite anybody in a public chat room to have a one-on-one chat by double-clicking on their name. In theory, privacy is guaranteed."

"But in reality .. ."

"In reality, if it's your own website, you can do just about anything you want."

Foley clicked, not on an individual's name, but on a menu option labeled PRIVATE CHAT. A window appeared, asking for his pa.s.sword, which he dutifully entered. A second window appeared an instant later, listing the ident.i.ties of all private chatters. Foley selected a name at random, clicked twice, then settled back.

The chat Foley chose was between Poobear and Plato. Though on a different topic and a good deal more specific, it was every bit as practical as the chatters' collective response to the home-schooling question.

Some six years before, Poobear had hired a live-in housekeeper, an undoc.u.mented alien named Dolores Ibarra who'd fled Nicaragua in the aftermath of its brutal civil war. He did this, not out of the goodness of his heart, but because Dolores Ibarra had no friends and only one relative in the United States. That relative was her nine-year-old daughter, Blanca.

Within a month, Poobear and Blanca were lovers. A year later, when Dolores figured it out, she did nothing to risk the food on her table, the clothes on her back, or the roof over her head.

Three years of paradise, of joy, of trips to Disney World, Great Adventures, of little presents, of birthday cakes and Christmas trees. Poobear was madly in love with Blanca, as Blanca (he insisted) was madly in love with him. Still, it was an affair destined to end in tragedy as Blanca, at thirteen, entered p.u.b.erty, as her innocence gradually faded.

I'm not a hard guy, Poobear insisted, but for Christ's sake, the f.u.c.kin' b.i.t.c.h is hairy as a goat.

As further evidence of his bleeding heart, Poobear explained, he'd put up with her teenage bulls.h.i.+t for three years, put up with her pimple-faced boyfriends and her stubbly armpits. But now it was time for her to go. Preferably, before she opened her mouth and told someone.

Plato took that moment to break into Poobear's pitiful monologue. He knew, he declared, certain people in San Francisco and Los Angeles who specialized in legal teens. These connections were prepared to handle any resistance from Blanca, but what about the mother? Would the mother go along?

MULIA TORE her eyes from the screen. Foley was watching her intently.

"This is your website?" Her voice was so soft, she might have been asking the question of herself.

"Yes."

"And you have photographs, that people can see?"

"You have to be a member to browse the galleries."

"A member?"

"You have to give us a verifiable e-mail address. In most cases, that's enough to get me a name, a home address, and a telephone number."

Julia stood up, crossed the room, then turned on the ball of her foot to face Foley. "You can't sell someone contraband, then arrest them for possession of that contraband. It's entrapment."

"I'm not selling p.o.r.nography, I'm giving it away. But I don't use the website to make cases. I use the website to find chicken hawks. I lure them in with l.u.s.t, then .. . My cybername, by the way, is Goober."

Foley spun to face the computer. "Watch." He brought them back to the open chat room, typed a command, then sent it out over the DSL connection. An instant later, a single line appeared: GOOBER'S IN THE ROOM.

Plato: Yo, Goober.

Scholar: Bring on the trumpets. Raise a fanfare.

Papi: Zorro: GooBER, GooBER, GooBER.

It TOOK only a few seconds for Foley to exit the room and the site. "Enough is enough," he said, turning away without shutting the computer down.

Julia crossed her legs, leaned forward to lay her elbows on the shelf holding the computer. "Okay, so you meet them on the Internet. Then what?"

"If they live reasonably close to New York, I arrange an exchange of p.o.r.nography. Video mostly." Foley drummed his fingers on the table, a quick rat-tat-tat. "Quality video is very hard to come by."

"And what do you do with the .. . the contraband they give you?"

"I copy it, then pa.s.s the originals on. Some to Lily Han, some to the feds. Still photographs get posted on my website."

"And that brings in more suspects."

"Exactly."

Julia leaned back in the chair. She inclined her head slightly, keeping Foley in her peripheral vision. "These videos, you watch them, right? From beginning to end. I mean, you wouldn't be able to judge their quality without looking at them."

"Yeah, I look at them."

"Even after what happened with your daughter. With Patti?"

Foley winced, despite himself, thinking he should have seen it coming. Not that the blow was fatal. No, for a number of years he'd felt as he imagined a surgeon would feel, cutting away the same cancer that had killed his own child years before. Flinching was not an option.

Suddenly, Foley experienced a surge of vulnerability, the emotion so foreign he took a moment to put a name to it.

"I used you," he finally said. "When Lily Han called me, I was looking for a way to get to the Mandrakes without Goodman finding out I was a cop. You've seen what happens on the internet. If Goodman found out I was cop, Goober would have been exposed at the speed of light. That's all it would take, Julia, a few keystrokes and I'd have to start all over. Remember, I was sure the other children, if there were other children, were already gone, so it just wasn't worth the exposure. Then you came along and it all fell into place."

"Did you realize you'd be a suspect?"

Foley laughed. "Very nice, but I didn't know the Mandrakes were dead until after the raid. However, once I learned the facts, yes, I was pretty certain Julia Brennan would consider me a suspect."

"And that's why you used me to establish an alibi?"

"That question implies that I had advance knowledge of Claude Renker's murder."

"Did you?" Julia rose, crossed the room to the apartment's single window, stared out at the tenement across the street. As ratty as any of its neighbors, its first floor and fire escape were painted a pure red while the upper stories were lemon yellow. A hand-painted sign on the front door carried the legend "American Society of Bhuddist Studies."

"I'm not going to help you find him," Foley said to Julia's back. "I'll promise you this, though. He's spinning out of control, taking risks. Most likely, within the next couple of weeks, he'll either blow himself away or be collared at the scene."

Julia filed the last bit away for later reference. "You could help? You could help, but you're refusing?"

"Listen to me, Julia. The Mandrakes, Teddy Goodman, Claude Renker, when I hear they're dead it makes me feel happy."

"You're a cop."

Foley sighed. "I have a badge, but I'm not cop. I stopped being a cop a long time ago. I'll never be a cop again. I never want to be a cop again." He walked across the room, laid his hands on Julia's shoulders. "If you remember, you came looking for me at the Twelfth Street Tavern when you could have kissed me off. Do you think I planned that as well?"

"The fisherman baits the hook, drops the hook in the water. Sometimes the fish are biting, sometimes they're not." Julia continued to stare out the window. Her eyes were raised, now, to the roof where a trio of elderly Asian women were doing tai chi. "Do you know who he is?" she asked. "Are you helping him?"

"The better question is how he found the Mandrakes."

"Yes, how did he find them without your help?"

"You'll have him within a couple of days if you answer that question."

"Positively or negatively?"

Gently, Foley turned Julia until they faced each other. "That first time, when you came through the door and I was sitting there, nursing a beer, wondering if you'd show up, I ..." He stopped, looking for the right word, finally gave up. "I admire everything about you. Your intelligence, your determination, even your command presence. There's a fire in you that warms my bones."

Julia laid her head against Foley's chest, noting that he was already hard. Just as well because she, herself, truth be told, was already wet. Stepping back, she slid his belt free of the buckle, pulled his s.h.i.+rt free of his trousers. "Just one question, Foley," she said, "before we get carried away. When I have my fourth o.r.g.a.s.m, do I get to call you Goober?"

THIRTY-TWO.

PETER FOLEY'S responding laugh was still echoing in the small room when someone pounded hard on the door, creating a second echo that chased Foley's laughter from corner to corner, as if trying to affect a capture. Startled, Julia looked at her lover who winked as he re-buckled his belt, then called out, his voice steady: "Who is it?"

"Special Agent Raymond Lear."

"Ray, you should have called ahead." Foley glanced at the bulge in his trousers. "I'm busy right now."

"I've got a search warrant for your apartment, Pete. You don't open the door, we're gonna have to force an entry."

Julia held up a finger, said, "Slide the warrant under the door."

"Who's that?"

"Lieutenant Julia Brennan, NYPD."

The door was so thin and so poorly manufactured that it simply popped free when a pry bar was inserted in the frame above the lock and given a hard twist. As Julia watched the door swing toward her, an entirely unexpected thought entered her mind. Three days before, she'd killed a man. She'd killed a man and she could do it again. For just a moment, she allowed herself to feel dangerous, to project that danger at Special Agent Raymond Lear who had yet to more than glance in her direction. Followed by four agents, all male, Lear strutted to the center of Foley's little apartment. His dark eyes swept the room until they fixed on the winking red light above the key pad next to the doorway.

"What's this?"

"It's my alarm. You broke the contact when you forced the door."

"You wanna shut it down?"

"I don't think so."

Foley's computer, the Gateway, began to chatter at that moment, an insect like noise that commanded instant attention. Lear's mouth opened in disbelief as he raced across the room, his arms extended. The chattering ceased just as he reached the computer.

"You .. ."

Lear could not find the words and Julia, watching him as she'd watch an unattended suspect in an interrogation room, shook her head in wonder. The man had a full head of stiff black hair that looked as though it had been extruded from little molds hidden beneath his scalp. Finally, unable to contain herself, she laughed out loud.

"What?" Lear demanded, finally turning his attention to Julia. "What do you have to say?"

Julia grabbed her purse, settled the strap on her shoulder. "I want you to know," she said, "that I don't despise you because you exploited Peter Foley for everything you could get, then turned on him, or even because you're a feeb a.s.shole. No, the reason I wouldn't p.i.s.s in your mouth if your heart was on fire is because you were stupid enough to believe that you'd recover evidence by coming through that door."

It was a good speech, or so Julia thought until Special Agent Lear surprised her with a jibe of his own. "Tell me something, lieutenant," he asked, "have you ever put your hormones aside long enough to entertain the possibility, the mere possibility, that your boyfriend's sob story is just his way of disguising the fact that he likes to hump little girls?"

"I SET it up," Foley explained over breakfast in a coffee shop on Var-ick Street a few blocks from the Holland Tunnel, "the way the Nor tons should have done it. When the alarm tripped, the computer sent a command to the first uplink, an internet server in Auckland. The first uplink forwarded the same command to the second, then zeroed itself out. The second uplink .. ." He smiled, glanced at his watch. "Within an hour, little_love.com, along with all links to and from, will cease to exist."

"And what about all the other data you collected on pedophiles?"

"Stored on diskettes, locked in a safe place. Agent Lear has everything he's going to get."

They were waiting for Detectives Griffith and Turro to arrive, armed with warrants naming Joe and Carla Norton as material witnesses in a conspiracy to prost.i.tute Anja Dascalescu and the other children. Julia had understood that securing the warrants would be time-consuming when she'd asked Lily Han to draw them up, but they were essential in case the Nortons refused to leave their New Jersey refuge. a.s.suming they were there at all.

In fact, Julia reminded herself, the Nortons could be anywhere in the world, literally; they need not be holed up with Joe Norton's sister, Elizabeth Nicolson, in Hackettstown. Still, using credit-card numbers recovered from the Nortons' hard drive, Foley had somehow accessed records showing a pair of recent purchases, both at a mall in Rockaway Towns.h.i.+p, New Jersey. They were the only credit-card purchases made by the Nortons in the last week.

It was enough, Julia decided as she b.u.t.tered a slice of whole-wheat toast, to justify a two-hour drive into central New Jersey, especially when the only alternative was to rely on the locals.

"I knew your apartment was a dead end the first time I walked in the door." Julia bit into her toast, chewed for a moment, swallowed, finally sipped at her coffee. "You're smart and you had a long time to think about it. But tell me one thing. Did you know Lear would try to bust you?"

"Him or Julia Brennan," Foley declared. "One or the other."

H N HOUR later, they were exiting the Holland Tunnel in a pair of unmarked Fords, Turro and Foley in the lead car, Bert Griffith and Julia trailing behind. The hope was that the Nortons would agree to return to New York, the alternative being a county jail while they fought extradition. Separating them on the return trip would be essential.

As Julia's driver, Griffith had the task of reporting C Squad's progress over the past twenty-four hours. The problem was that he was sulking. He'd been a.s.signed the task of finding the Nortons, then shut out. Now he felt like a chump.

Julia let it ride for a few minutes, enduring her detective's monosyllabic responses, then decided to confront the issue head-on. "I know you're p.i.s.sed off," she said.

"About what?" Griffith stared straight ahead, his face composed, as usual.

"About my finding the Nortons without you." When Griffith didn't reply, Julia offered the only excuse she had. "What I did, Bert, if anybody found out, it would be the end of my career." She thought of the Nortons' hard drive, seized without search warrant, and Foley's perusal of the Nortons' credit reports. "At the very least."

"That bad, huh?"

"I don't have a moment's regret. We're gonna get the sc.u.mbags who brought Anja to this country and we're gonna find any other kids who're still out there."

"The ends justify the means? That how it goes?"

"Yeah," Julia replied without hesitation. "These particular ends justify these particular means. For me, not you. Now do me a favor, tell me what's going on."

"Joe Norton," Griffith said after a moment. "He's got two pistol permits, nine millimeter automatics, a Browning and a Colt. He belongs to a gun club in Belmont, so you gotta figure he knows how to use 'em."

A potential problem down the line. Julia would prefer to approach the Nortons casually, without attracting the attention of the locals. But if Joe Norton was armed, standard operating procedure called for him to be taken down hard.

"What else?"

"David Lane bullied Claude Renker's brother into watching one of the videotapes. Renker was definitely a client of the Nortons. About what we expected." Griffith eased the Ford around a gray eighteen wheeler hauling a load of munic.i.p.al waste. Even in January, the stench of rotting garbage was strong enough permeate the Ford's interior. "Turro thinks we might have more vies out there."

"He thinks there's another dump?" Julia had a.s.signed Turro to the missing persons reports, hoping to identify the decomposed victims found with Teddy Goodman.

"Men walkin' away from their families? You know, there's plenty of that goin' on, always has been. But Frank's sayin' he found a dozen men reported missing in the last year who fit the vie profile."